I know, theres a few people here working on BOTF remakes/sequels, and they are all great and look splendid.

What I am doing however is a bit outside the BOTF box, although i do draw some of the games inspiration from BOTF and other games(MoO2, Stars!, Pax Impera, Galactic Conquest, even Civ2 *gasp* lol)

Some of the main features of the game so that you might understand why this isn't simply just a BOTF2 type project

TBS(turn based strategy) possibly RTS elements like in Pax Impera
Will have a massive galaxy size(in BOTF terms this would be around 150x150 sector map, with sectors being more than just a square, more on this below)

Fully customizable(races, ships, modules*, techs, UI, etc) - everything except for game mechanics lol.

*Modules -> Think Mo2, Stars!, Pax Impera. All ships will be designed by modules, you make the ships the way you need them, when you need them.

Research will NOT be linear progression. You will multiple types of research in various areas. Theoretical research where you research an Idea. Developmental research where you turn that idea into a design you can use. and Prototype research, you take that design and actually build it, make sure it works right, etc. This feels more natural, and obviously research times are going to be dcided by trial and error, making the initial game as balanced as possible.

Ship speeds will be determined by a multitude of factors, like how far you are travelling, what TYPE of engines you are using(eg Warp, Hyperdrive, Interdimensional, etc) possible obstacles, depending on engines again.

Different techs for different races. Not every race will think the same, why should they follow the same types of research trees. an Aquatic race is going to think in a way that might make space travel and planetary construction similar. A race that lives underground might see construction and astronomy very similar, etc.

Which brings me to my next part - Races.
Races will be fully customizable(along the same lines as Pax, Stars!, MoO2). Yes, you could make the UFP, or even decide to make the shadows from B5 and play them against each other. The only limit will be your imagination(and the code ... cause lord knows i cant do EVERYTHING). Diplomacy will be fully interactive, allowing for a wide range of treaties and various other agendas, including things like determining a neutral zone, have a military only alliance, having a research alliance, creating a full alliance(with multiple races and full/partial co-op).

I will write more later on ... this was quite a bit of typing and im tired of all the typing i've done today lol.

The maximum value of the scan strength is determined by the number of bits that I have allocated for storing the scan strength value in each sector's corresponding UInt16 (5 bits).

The UpgradeScanStrength functions that loop do so because the function upgrades the scan strength for all sectors within a radius of a specified origin sector. Therefore, it loops to cover all sectors within that radius. For instance, if a ship located in sector [2, 2] has a scan strength of 3 and a sensor range of 2 (with a reduction/falloff of 1 unit of scan strength per sector from the origin), it would modify the scan strength values of all the sectors between [0, 0] and [4, 4]. The resulting scan strength would be as follows (assuming it was zero across the board prior to the function call):

<pre>1 1 1 1 1 0 ...
1 2 2 2 1 0 ...
1 2 3 2 1 0 ...
1 2 2 2 1 0 ...
1 1 1 1 1 0 ...
0 0 0 0 0 0 ...</pre>Make sense now?

Note that the reason it's called UpgradeScanStrength is because it doesn't add to the existing value, but it will replace the existing value if it is lower than the newly computed value.

I just realized that the code used to re-initialize the map data at the beginning of each turn is not included in the code above. Basically, each turn, I reset the scan strength of each sector to 0 and reset the fuel range to its maximum value of 255. Then, I iterate through all of the empire's sensor sources (ships, listening posts, etc), and upgrade the scan strength values. Lastly, I iterate through all of the empire's supply posts (shipyards and stations), and use those to upgrade the fuel range values (I say "upgrade", but really we're reducing the distance between a sector and the supply posts).

I hope that clarifies things a bit .

well by looping i meant that each function calls the other ... making what appears to be an infinite loop ... but after having read through the math and everything it looks ok ... just odd cause it seems like it could very quickly get stuck.

As for the second part, having looked over the functions a bit i took on the assumption that you would first clear all data and reset it, then iterate through and update with correct info to 'flush' any possible residual side affects that might somehow appear.

I can see why it might look recursive, but if you check the parameter count, none of the methods actually call themselves. They call like-named methods. The UpgradeScanStrength method that takes in radius parameter calls the UpgradeScanStrength method that operates on a single sector.

Also, as far as your research tree, you might want to check out what they're doing in the project. They have theories, applications, and refinements, much like in the MoO series.

I'd be glad to take a look at it and make sure you get the schema references correct in the XML, etc. It's tricky at first, then you get the hang of it after a while.